An article from Do or Die Issue 10.
In the
paper edition, this article appears on page(s)
258-266.

Insurrectionary Anarchy

Organising for Attack!

"From a certain point onward, there is no turning back. That is the point
that must be reached."
- Franz Kafka.

For us anarchists the questions of how to act and how to organise are
intimately linked. And it is these two questions, not the question of the
desired form of a future society, that provide us with the most useful method
for understanding the various forms of anarchism that exist.

Insurrectionary anarchism is one such form, although it is important to
stress that insurrectionary anarchists don't form one unified block, but are
extremely varied in their perspectives. Insurrectionary anarchism is not an
ideological solution to social problems, nor a commodity on the capitalist
market of ideologies and opinions. Rather it is an on-going practice aimed at
putting an end to the domination of the state and the continuance of capitalism,
which requires analysis and discussion to advance. Historically, most
anarchists, except those who believed that society would evolve to the point
that it would leave the state behind, have believed that some sort of
insurrectionary activity would be necessary to radically transform society. Most
simply, this means that the state has to be knocked out of existence by the
exploited and excluded, thus anarchists must attack: waiting for the state to
disappear is defeat.

Here we spell out some implications that we and some other insurrectionary
anarchists have drawn from this general problem: if the state will not disappear
on its own, how then do we end its existence? Insurrectionary anarchism is
primarily a practice, and focuses on the organisation of attack. Thus, the
adjective 'insurrectionary' does not indicate a specific model of the future.
Anarchists who believe we must go through an insurrectionary period to rid the
world of the institutions of domination and exploitation, moreover, take a
variety of positions on the shape of a future society - they could be
anarcho-communist, individualist or primitivist, for example. Many refuse to
offer a specific, singular model of the future at all, believing that people
will choose a variety of social forms to organise themselves when given the
chance. They are critical of groups or tendencies that believe they are
'carriers of the truth' and try to impose their ideological and formal solution
to the problem of social organisation. Instead, many insurrectionary anarchists
believe that it is through self-organisation in struggle that people will learn
to live without institutions of domination.

There is also another, more specific usage of the term 'insurrection' - one
that comes from the distinction Max Stirner, a 19th century German philosopher
and individualist, drew between insurrection and revolution.[1] To Stirner,
revolution implied a transition between two systems, whereas insurrection is an
uprising that begins from an individual's discontent with their own life and
through it the individual does not seek to build a new system but to create the
relations they desire. Both of these general conceptions of insurrection have
informed insurrectionary anarchism.

In this article we will first explore some of the general implications of
these two conceptions of insurrection. Then, as these ideas have grown out of
the practice of struggle and from concrete experiences, we will explain these
ideas further by putting them within the historical context of their
development. While insurrectionary anarchists are active in many parts of the
world at the moment, we are particularly influenced by the activities and
writings of those in Italy and Greece, which are also the countries where
insurrectionary anarchists are the most active. The current, extremely varied
Italian insurrectionary anarchist scene, which centres around a number of
occupied spaces and publications, exists as an informal network carrying on
their struggle outside of all formal organisations. This tendency has taken on
the 'insurrectionary anarchist' label to distinguish itself from the Italian
Anarchist Federation; a platformist organisation which officially reject
individual acts of revolt, favouring only mass action and an educational and
evangelistic practice centring around propaganda in 'non-revolutionary periods'
- and from the Italian libertarian municipalists[2] who take a largely reformist
approach to 'anarchist' activity.

The state will not wither away, as it seems many anarchists have come to
believe - some are entrenched in a position of waiting, while others even openly
condemn the acts of those for whom the creation of the new world depends on the
destruction of the old. Attack is the refusal of mediation, pacification,
sacrifice, accommodation and compromise in struggle. It is through acting and
learning to act, not propaganda, that we will open the path to insurrection -
although obviously analysis and discussion have a role in clarifying how to act.
Waiting only teaches waiting; in acting one learns to act. Yet it is important
to note that the force of an insurrection is social, not military. The measure
for evaluating the importance of a generalised revolt is not the armed clash,
but, on the contrary, the extent of the paralysis of the economy, of normality.
If students continue to study, workers and office employees to work, the
unemployed to solely strive for employment, then no change is possible. We could
look to the examples of May 1968 in Paris, Italy in the 1970s, or the more
recent insurrection in Albania for inspiration.[3]

Sabotage and Other 'Modest Attempts'

As anarchists, the revolution is our constant point
of reference; no matter what we are doing or with what problem we are concerned.
But the revolution is not a myth simply to be used as a point of reference, it
should not be thought of as inhabiting an abstract future. Precisely because it
is a concrete event, it must be built daily through more modest attempts that do
not have all the liberating characteristics of the social revolution in the true
sense. These more modest attempts are insurrections. In them the uprising of the
most exploited and excluded of society and the most politically aware minority
opens the way to the possible involvement of increasingly wider sections of the
exploited in a flux of rebellion which could lead to revolution. Over the last
year, we have seen the beginning of this process at work in Argentina. Yet
struggles must be developed both in the intermediate and long term. In other
words, it is still possible and necessary to intervene in intermediate
struggles, that is, in struggles that are circumscribed, even locally, with
precise objectives that are born from some specific problem. This may be direct
actions to resist the building of military bases or prisons; fights against the
institution of property, such as squatting and rent strikes; or attacks on
particular capitalist projects, such as high-speed railways, genetically
modified crops or power transmission lines. These should not be considered to be
of secondary importance; such kinds of struggles also disturb capitalism's
universal project.

For these events to build, they must spread; insurrectionary anarchism,
therefore, places particular importance on the circulation and spread of action,
not managed revolt, for no army or police force is able to control the
generalised circulation of such autonomous activity. Paying attention to how
struggles have spread has led many anarchists to aim their critical focus on the
question of organisation, for whereas centralised struggle is controlled and
limited (one only needs to think of the examples of the many revolutionary
movements in Latin America that until recently were controlled by 'The Party' to
understand this), autonomous struggle has the capacity to spread
capillary-style.

Therefore, what the system is afraid of is not just these acts of sabotage
themselves, but also them spreading socially. Uncontrollability itself is the
strength of the insurrection. Every proletarianised individual who disposes of
even the most modest means can draw up his or her objectives, alone or along
with others. It is materially impossible for the state and capital to police the
whole social terrain. Anyone who really wants to contest the network of control
can make their own theoretical and practical contribution as they see fit. There
is no need to fit themselves within the structured roles of formally organised
revolt (revolt that is circumscribed and controlled by an organisation). The
appearance of the first broken links of social control coincides with the
spreading of acts of sabotage. The anonymous practice of social self-liberation
could spread to all fields, breaking the codes of prevention put into place by
power.

In moments when larger scale insurrections are not taking place, small
actions - which require unsophisticated means that are available to all and thus
are easily reproducible - are by their very simplicity and spontaneity
uncontrollable. They make a mockery of even the most advanced technological
developments in counter-insurgency. In the United States, a string of arsons of
environmentally damaging projects, some claimed under the name Earth Liberation
Front, have spread across the country due largely to the simplicity of the
technique. In Italy, sabotage of high speed railways has spread uncontrollably,
again because anyone can plan and carry out their own action without needing a
large organisation with charters and constitutions, complex techniques or
sophisticated knowledge.

In addition, contrary to the mathematicians of the grand revolutionary
parties, it is never possible to see the outcome of a specific struggle in
advance. Even a limited struggle can have the most unexpected consequences. The
passage from the various insurrections - limited and circumscribed - to
revolution can never be guaranteed in advance by any method, nor can one know in
advance that present actions will not lead to a future insurrectionary
moment.

Roots of Insurrectionary Anarchy

As insurrectionary anarchism is a developing practice
- not an ideological model of the future or a determinist history -
insurrectionary anarchists do not take the work of any single revolutionary
theoretician as their central doctrine: thus insurrectionary anarchists are not
Bakuninists, for example, and feel no need to defend all his writings and
actions. Yet Bakunin was historically important to the development of an
anarchism that focused its force in insurrection. Unlike Marx, who built his
support in the First International, mostly within the central executive
structure, Bakunin worked to build support for co-ordinated action though
autonomous insurrections at the base, especially in Southern Europe. And since
Bakunin's time insurrectionary anarchists have been concentrated in Southern
Europe.

In the responses to the Paris Commune of 1871 and in the conflicts of the
First International one can see the formation of insurrectionary anarchism's
basic concepts. Whereas Marx believed that the new political forms of the
Commune (forms of democracy and representation) would advance the social
revolution, Bakunin argued that political and organisational forms had held the
social revolution back. Also influential to later insurrectionaries, Bakunin
argued that it was one's actions that would spread the revolution, not words. In
1871 Marx and his supporters allied themselves with the followers of Blanqui -
from whom the concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" came - to cut
Bakunin and his supporters out of a special conference of the International held
in London. Bakuninists held their own conference in Sonvilier, arguing that
hierarchical and political means could never be used to gain social
revolutionary ends. As the Sonvilier circular states, it was impossible "for a
free and egalitarian society to come out of an authoritarian organisation." Marx
pejoratively termed the Sonvilier conference "anarchist," and those in Sonvilier
called the London conference "Marxist" to mark its authoritarian attempt to
control the International. In 1872, Marx succeeded in expelling Bakunin from the
International and requiring all member organisations to advocate the conquest of
political power as the necessary prerequisite to revolution.

Social and Individual Struggle

Another issue that has caused a lot of debate within
anarchist circles is the supposed contradiction between individual and social
struggle: again, this is a question of the organisation of struggle. This is a
debate that has gone on and still goes on within the insurrectionary anarchist
circles; Renzo Novatore stood for individual revolt, Errico Malatesta for social
struggle, whilst Luigi Galleani believed there was no contradiction between the
two.

Novatore, an Italian anarchist who died in a shoot-out with the police in
1922, wrote, "Anarchy is not a social form, but a method of individuation. No
society will concede to me more than a limited freedom and a well-being that it
grants to each of its members."[4] Malatesta, also an Italian and an active
insurrectionary his whole life, was an anarcho-communist for whom anarchism was
based in the organised attack of collective struggle, especially of the labour
movement; yet, he was still very critical of any form of organisation that could
become authoritarian. This was the basis of his 1927 disagreement with the
Russian Platformists - who attempted to create a centralised and unitary
revolutionary organisation.

Malatesta critiqued the proposal of the Platformists - who put forward their
program in response to the victory of the Bolsheviks in Russia - for attempting
to discipline and synthesise struggle within a single organisation. In his
critique of the proposal he stated, "in order to achieve their ends, anarchist
organisations must in their constitution and operation, remain in harmony with
the principles of anarchism; that is, they must know how to blend the free
action of individuals with the necessity and the joy of co-operation which serve
to develop the awareness and initiative of their members." While many social
anarchists of today critique insurrectionary anarchists by claiming that they
are against organisation as such, it is worth noting that most social anarchists
and anarcho-communists active in the beginning of the last century did not view
organisation and individualism as a contradiction, and that few anarchists have
ever been against organisation as such. Maltesta's 1927 statement on the subject
bears repeating: "Judging by certain polemics it would seem that there are
anarchists who spurn any form of organisation; but in fact the many, too many,
discussions on this subject, even when obscured by questions of language or
poisoned by personal issues, are concerned with the means and not the actual
principle of organisation. Thus it happens that when those comrades who sound
the most hostile to organisation want to really do something they organise just
like the rest of us and often more effectively. The problem, I repeat, is
entirely one of means."[5]

Galleani, who emigrated to the United States in 1901 after facing arrest in
Europe edited one of the most important US Italian anarchist journals,
Cronaca Sovversiva, and was critical of formal organisation. In his
articles and speeches he merged Kropotkin's idea of mutual aid with unfettered
insurgency, defending communist anarchism against authoritarian socialism and
reformism, speaking of the value of spontaneity, variety, autonomy and
independence, direct action and self-determination. Galleani and his followers
were deeply suspicious of formal organisations, seeing them as likely to turn
into hierarchical, authoritarian organisations. The critique of formal
organisation has become a central concern of most insurrectionary anarchists
ever since. Galleani saw no contradiction between individual and social
struggle, nor did he see a contradiction between communism and anarchism. He was
firmly against authoritarian communism, which he saw as growing out of
collectivist ideologies - the idea that production and consumption must be
organised into a collective in which individuals must participate. Galleani is
one of main influences on those who today call themselves insurrectionary
anarchists.

Why we are Insurrectionary Anarchists...

Because we consider it possible
to contribute to the development of struggles that are appearing
spontaneously everywhere,
turning them into mass insurrections - that is to say actual revolutions.

Because we want to destroy the capitalist order of the world
which is useful to nobody but the managers of class domination.

Because we are for the immediate, destructive attack against
the structures, individuals and organisations of capital, state and
all forms of oppression.

Because we constructively criticise all those who are in situations
of compromise with power in their belief that the revolutionary struggle
is impossible at the present time.

Because rather than wait, we have decided to proceed to action,
even if the time is not ripe.

Because we want to put an end to this state of affairs right
away, rather than wait until conditions make its transformation possible.

These are some of the reasons why we are anarchists, revolutionaries and insurrectionists.

by Alfredo Bonanno.

The debate about the relation between individual and social struggle, between
individualism and communism, continues today. Some insurrectionary anarchists
argue that insurrection begins with the desire of individuals to break out of
constrained and controlled circumstances, the desire to re-appropriate the
capacity to create one's own life as one sees fit. This requires that they
overcome the separation between themselves and their conditions of existence -
food, housing, etc. Where the few, the privileged, control the conditions of
existence, it is not possible for most individuals to truly determine their
existence on their own terms. Individuality can only flourish where there is
equality of access to the conditions of existence. This equality of access
is communism; what individuals do with that access is up to them and those
around them. Therefore, there is no equality or identity of individuals
implied in true communism. What forces us into an identity or an equality of
being are the social roles laid upon us by our present system. Thus there is no
contradiction between individuality and communism.

The insurrectional anarchist project grows out of the individual's desire to
determine how one will live one's life and with whom one will carry out this
project of self-determination. But this desire is confronted on all sides by the
existing social order, a reality in which the conditions of our existence and
the social relationships through which our lives are created have already been
determined in the interests of a ruling class who benefit from the activities
that we are compelled to do for our own survival.

Thus the desire for individual self-determination and self-realisation leads
to the necessity of a class analysis and class struggle. But the old workerist
conceptions, which perceived the industrial working class as the central subject
of revolution, are not adequate to this task. What defines us as a class is our
dispossession, the fact that the current system of social relationships
steals away our capacity to determine the conditions of our existence. Class
struggle exists in all of the individual and collective acts of revolt in which
small portions of our daily life are taken back or small portions of the
apparatus of domination and exploitation are obstructed, damaged or destroyed.
In a significant sense, there are no isolated, individual acts of revolt. All
such acts are responses to the social situation, and many involve some level of
complicity, indicating some level of collective struggle. Consider, for example,
the spontaneous, mostly unspoken organisation of the theft of goods and the
sabotage of the work process that goes on at most workplaces; this informal
co-ordination of subversive activity carried out in the interest of each
individual involved is a central principle of collective activity for
insurrectionary anarchists, because the collectivity exists to serve the
interests and desires of each of the individuals in re-appropriating their lives
and often carries within it a conception of ways of relating free of
exploitation and domination.

But even lone acts of revolt have their social aspects and are part of the
general struggle of the dispossessed. Through a critical attitude towards the
struggles of the past, the changes in the forces of domination and their
variation between different places, and the development of present struggles, we
can make our attack more strategic and targeted. Such a critical attitude is
what allows struggles to circulate. Being strategic, however, does not mean
there is only one way to struggle; clear strategies are necessary to allow
different methods to be used in a co-ordinated and fruitful way. Individual and
social struggle are neither contradictory, nor identical.

Critique of Organisation

In Italy, the failure of the social movements of the
1960s and 1970s led some to reassess the revolutionary movement and others to
abandon it all together. During the '70s, many Leninist groups concluded that
capitalism was in the throes of its final crisis, and they moved to armed
struggle. These groups acted as professional revolutionaries, reducing their
lives to a singular social role. But by the 1980s they came to believe that the
time for revolutionary social struggle had ended, and they thus called for an
amnesty for movement prisoners from the '70s, some even going as far as to
disassociate themselves from the struggle. This separated them from
insurrectionary anarchists who believed that a revolutionary struggle to
overthrow capitalism and the state still continued, for no determinist history
could name the correct moment to rebel. In fact, determinist history often
becomes an excuse for not acting and only pushes a possible rupture with the
present further into the impossible.

Much of the Italian insurrectionary anarchist critique of the movements of
the '70s focused on the forms of organisation that shaped the forces of struggle
and out of this a more developed idea of informal organisation grew. A critique
of the authoritarian organisations of the '70s, whose members often believed
they were in a privileged position to struggle as compared to the proletariat as
a whole, was further refined in the struggles of the '80s, such as the early
1980s struggle against a military base that was to house nuclear weapons in
Comiso, Sicily. Anarchists were very active in that struggle, which was
organised into self-managed leagues. These ad hoc, autonomous leagues took three
general principles to guide the organisation of struggle: permanent conflict,
self-management and attack. Permanent conflict meant that the struggle would
remain in conflict with the construction of the base until it was defeated
without mediating or negotiating. The leagues were self-generated and
self-managed; they refused permanent delegation of representatives and the
professionalisation of struggle. The leagues were organisations of attack on the
construction of the base, not the defence of the interests of this or that
group. This style of organisation allowed groups to take the actions they saw as
most effective while still being able to co-ordinate attack when useful, thus
keeping open the potential of struggle to spread. It also kept the focus of
organisation on the goal of ending the construction of the base instead of the
building of permanent organisations, for which mediating with state institutions
for a share of power usually becomes the focus and limiting the autonomy of
struggle the means.

As the anarchists involved in the Comiso struggle understood, one of the
central reasons that social struggles are kept from developing in a positive
direction is the prevalence of forms of organisation that cut us off from our
own power to act and close off the potential of insurrection. These are
permanent organisations, those that synthesise all struggle within a single
organisation, and organisations that mediate struggles with the institutions of
domination. Permanent organisations tend to develop into institutions that stand
above the struggling multitude. They tend to develop a formal or informal
hierarchy and to disempower the multitude: power is alienated from its active
form within the multitude and instituted within the organisation. This
transforms the active multitude into a passive mass. The hierarchical
constitution of power relations removes decision from the time such a decision
is necessary and places it within the organisation. The practical consequence of
such an organisation is that the active powers of those involved in the struggle
are stifled by the organisation. Decisions that should be made by those involved
in an action are deferred to the organisation; moreover, permanent organisations
tend to make decisions based not on the necessity of a specific goal or action,
but on the needs of that organisation, especially its preservation. The
organisation becomes an end in itself. One needs only to look at the operations
of the many socialist parties to see this in its most blatant form.

As an organisation moves towards permanence and comes to stand above the
multitude, the organiser appears - often claiming to have created the
struggle - and begins to speak for the mass. It is the job of the organiser to
transform the multitude into a controllable mass and to represent that mass to
the media or state institutions. Organisers rarely view themselves as part of
the multitude, thus they don't see it as their task to act, but to propagandise
and organise, for it is the masses that act.

The Opinion Factory

For the organiser, who takes as their motto 'only
that which appears in the media exists', real action always takes a back seat to
the maintenance of the media image. The goal of such image maintenance is never
to attack a specific institution of domination, but to affect public opinion, to
forever build the movement or, even worse, the organisation. The organiser must
always worry about how the actions of others will reflect on the movement; they
must, therefore, both attempt to discipline the struggling multitude and try to
control how the movement is represented in the media. Image usually replaces
action for the permanent organisation and the organiser.

The attempt to control the vast image and opinion-making factories of our
society is a losing battle, as if we could ever try to match the quantity of
images put forward by the media or get them to 'tell the truth'. Thus, many
insurrectionary anarchists have been very critical of carrying on the struggle
within the capitalist mass media. In Italy, this has put them at odds with
organisations such as Ya Basta! who see the media as a key vehicle for
their movement; in other parts of the world, the question of how anarchists
should relate to the media has been a focus of debate in recent years -
especially since 1999 in Seattle - and it is therefore important for us to spell
out the critical position of some insurrectionary anarchists.

On a basic level, we need to ask, what is opinion? An opinion is not
something first found among the public in general and then, afterwards, replayed
through the media, as a simple reporting of the public opinion. An opinion
exists in the media first. Secondly, the media then reproduces the opinion a
million times over, linking the opinion to a certain type of person
(conservatives think X, liberals think Y). Thirdly, as Alfredo
Bonanno points out, "[An opinion] is a flattened idea, an idea that has been
uniformed in order to make it acceptable to the largest number of people.
Opinions are massified ideas."[6] Public opinion is produced as a series of
simple choices or solutions ("I'm for globalisation and free trade" or "I'm for
more national control and protectionism"). We are all supposed to choose - as we
choose our leaders or our burgers - instead of thinking for ourselves. It is
obvious, therefore, that anarchists cannot use the opinion-making factory to
create counter-opinions, and hopefully anarchists would never want to operate on
the level of opinion even if we could somehow exert control over the content
spewed out of the factory gates. Anyhow, the ethic of anarchism could never be
communicated in the form of opinion; it would die once massified. Yet, it is
exactly on the level of opinion that the organiser works, for opinion and
image-maintenance are the very tools of power, tools used to shape and
discipline a multitude into a controllable mass.

Instead of moving power and decision making into an organisation, most
insurrectionary anarchists recognise the need to organise in a fashion that
lacks the formality and authority which separate organisers and organised; this
is called informal organisation. Because the organiser's nature is to plan and
control, they often privilege the perpetuation of the organisation over other
goals. Informal organisations, on the other hand, dissolve when their goal is
achieved or abandoned; they do not perpetuate themselves merely for the sake of
the organisation if the goals that caused people to organise have ceased to
exist.

As in the case of the Comiso leagues, informal organisation is a means for
affinity groups to co-ordinate efforts when necessary. We must always remember
that many things can be done more easily by an affinity group or individual,
and, in these cases, higher levels of organisation just make the decision making
process cumbersome - it stifles us. The smallest amount of organisation
necessary to achieve one's aims is always the best to maximise our efforts.

Informal organisation must be based on an ethic of autonomous action;
autonomy is necessary to prevent our active powers from becoming alienated, to
prevent the formation of relations of authority. Autonomy is refusing to obey or
give orders, which are always shouted from above or beyond the situation.
Autonomy allows decisions to be made when they are necessary, instead of being
pre-determined or delayed by the decision of a committee or meeting. This does
not mean to say however that we shouldn't think strategically about the future
and make agreements or plans. On the contrary, plans and agreements are useful
and important. What is emphasised is a flexibility that allows people to discard
plans when they become useless. Plans should be adaptable to events as they
unfold.

Just as an informal organisation must have an ethic of autonomy or it will be
transformed into an authoritarian organisation, in order to avoid the alienation
of our active powers, it must also have an ethic of no compromise with respect
to the organisation's agreed goal. The organisation's goal should be either
moved towards or abandoned. Compromising with those who we oppose (e.g. the
state or a corporation) defeats all true opposition, it replaces our power to
act with that of our enemies.

The scraps handed down to appease and divert us by those we oppose must be
refused. Compromise with any institution of domination (the state, the police,
WTO, IMF, 'The Party', etc.) is always the alienation of our power to the very
institutions we supposedly wish to destroy; this sort of compromise results in
the forfeiture of our power to act decisively, to make decisions and actions
when we choose. As such, compromise only makes the state and capital stronger.
For those who wish to open the possibility of insurrection, for those who don't
wish to wait for the supposedly appropriate material conditions for revolution,
for those who don't want a revolution which is merely the creation of a new
power structure but want the destruction of all structures which alienate our
power from us, such compromise is contrary to their aims. To continually refuse
to compromise is to be in perpetual conflict with the established order and its
structures of domination and deprivation. Permanent conflict is uncontrollable
autonomous action that does not compromise with power.

Revolutionary Solidarity

Revolutionary solidarity, another central practice of
insurrectionary anarchism, allows us to move far beyond the 'send a cheque'
style of solidarity that so pervades the Left, as well as solidarity that relies
on petitioning the state for relief or mercy. One example of revolutionary
solidarity was Nikos Mazotis' action against TVX Gold in December 1997.[7] Many
people in the villages around Strymonikos in Northern Greece were struggling
against the installation of a gold metallurgy plant in their area. In solidarity
with the villagers, Nikos placed a bomb in the Ministry of Industry and
Development that was intended to explode when no one was in the building;
unfortunately, it never went off at all. Nikos was sentenced to fifteen years in
prison, but is now free. TVX Gold is a multinational company whose headquarters
is in Canada, there are thus many points at which revolutionary solidarity with
the villagers of Stryminikos could have been enacted. Fundraising on behalf of
one's comrades is necessary and surely appreciated, but this can be combined
with more active forms of solidarity with those who struggle against our common
enemies. Revolutionary solidarity communicates the link between the exploitation
and repression of others and our own fate, and it shows people the points at
which capitalism or the state operate in similar ways in very different places.
By creating links between struggles against the state and capital, revolutionary
solidarity has the potential to take our local struggles to a global level.

Moreover, revolutionary solidarity is always an active attack; it always
involves the recovery of our own active powers that multiply in combination - in
solidarity - with the active powers of others. Many insurrectionary anarchists
have been involved in the resistance against the FIES prison regime
(Ficheros de Internos de Especial Seguimiento - Inmate Files for Special
Monitoring) in Spain. This is a revolutionary struggle because it is not only
aimed at a mere reform, but ultimately its goal is the disappearance of prisons,
which involves a radical social change. It is a self-organised struggle, in
which there are not any leaders or representatives, neither inside the prisons
nor outside, but only solidarity that grows between exploited people both from
inside and outside the walls.

One of the primary strengths of informal organisation is that it allows
anarchists to intervene in intermediate or specific struggles without
compromising principles or demanding uniformity of action and politics.
Informally organised struggles may be composed of affinity groups with quite
different political perspectives from each other. Some people may wish to open
the possibility for insurrection, while others are only concerned with an
immediate goal. There is no reason why those who share an immediate practical
aim but diverge in their long-term goals might not come together. For example,
an anti-genetic engineering (GE) group could form and decide to co-ordinate the
tearing up test crops and to circulate anti-GE leaflets. In this case those who
want an insurrectionary rupture with this social order and those who merely hate
genetic engineering could easily work together towards this immediate goal.
Groups that take a more insurrectionary approach to action, however, often end
up in conflict with other groups working around similar issues. The Earth
Liberation Front, an informally organised set of groups which have taken a
position of attack on those they see as destroying the earth, have been vilified
by the mainstream environmental movement. At the same time, they would probably
be critiqued by many insurrectionary anarchists for focusing defensively on the
protection of the earth and ignoring the social aspect of revolution. What is
important to allow different groups to work together is co-ordination with
autonomy.

For those who wish to open the possibility of insurrection, such co-operation
will not close the door on their dreams. Informal organisation, with its ethics
of autonomy and no compromise, does not control struggle, and uncontrollability
opens the possibility for an insurrectionary rupture with the present social
order..

Notes

1) See The Ego and Its Own by Max Stirner (Rebel Press, London, 1993)
ISBN 0 946061 009

2) 'Anarchists' who generally turn their back on direct action, and use
local politics to try and gain reforms and establish 'anarchist controlled'
towns.

7) When arrested Nikos refused to recognise the authority of the whole legal
system. He made a radical anarchist statement to the court during his trial,
giving the reasons for the bombing, and explaining his insurrectionary hatred
for the state and industry. He's now released.

Further Reading

It's worth looking at these two English language
insurrectionary anarchist journals:

Many insurrectionary anarchist writings can be obtained from Elephant
Editions publications. These, mainly pamphlets, can be ordered from them at:
Elephant Editions, BM Elephant, London WC1N 3XX, England. Many of them can also
be found on the web at: http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/ioaa/ioaa.html

When Will it be Time for Insurrection?

I have a theory. My theory is that every time the government or some
corporation commits an act of destruction to the wild or humanity;
if every time a corporation's oil tanker pollutes a coastline, or they
mangle, plunder and destroy a wild place; if every time they do this,
I take my anger and I place it in a certain compartment inside my brain,
when it comes time for the insurrection I will be able to access those
pieces of anger that I stored.

So I spend my days patiently continuingly attempting to stop the madness
which drives the governments and corporations, and each day I hear of
new atrocities. I go on another A to B demonstration, shout some slogans,
and then at the end of day I again open up this special compartment and
put the anger of some new atrocity in it, all in anticipation of the
day when I shall need this anger to bring the Empire down.

But a new fear has overcome me. I perceive my anger calling me from
inside this compartment, I hear the door unlatching from inside, and
this new terrible question approaches me:

How shall I know when it's time for insurrection?

Will it be when the next river or lake is destroyed after being needlessly
polluted? When logging companies have destroyed another eco-system and
driven the native peoples from the land?

Is then the time for insurrection?

Or is it when a government or NATO or the UN bombs a country and murders
thousands of people? When another multinational is complicit with the
murder of indigenous tribes so another of the earth's natural areas can
be plundered?

Is then the time for insurrection?

When your local factory exports another shipment of arms designed and
destined to kill people like you and me? If corporations continue to
wreak havoc upon the ozone layer, if ecology is cast blindly aside in
favour of profit? If certain parties proceed in a manner which is clearly
imperilling the lives of a multitude of glorious and beautiful animals
and plants on our planet?

Is then the time for insurrection?

Or do we carry on simply demonstrating, handing in petitions, hoping
the system will realise its faults and change, or hope for a future revolution
when we've got the masses on our side and we will then be able to put
everything right? Do we hope for this whilst the system carries on destroying
us and the planet to such an extent that the world may not be worth living
in when we finally get round to doing anything about it?

Do we carry on waiting and waiting until things get critical? Is it
then the time for insurrection?